Posts Tagged ‘interwave studios’

The dark saga of unfinished Metroidvania scare-‘em-up Dark Matter continues. When last we left our intrepid, um, not-really-a-hero-at-all, it had tossed up a “To Be Continued” screen and blamed the fickle whims of Kickstarter for its wet thud of an ending. However, publisher Iceberg Interactive replied to justifiable outrage by claiming that “a more conclusive and satisfying ending” is on the way. Even so, that hasn’t stopped both GOG and Steam from purging their virtual shelves of the half-baked action-adventure, and now, if a report from Gamasutra is to be believed, the recipe for disaster is still boiling away. Apparently, many members of developer Interwave were let go months before Dark Matter came out, and the original team is not involved with the new content at all.

Update: GOG are offering refunds to anyone who bought the game before 21 October 2013 at 15:00 GMT and it is no longer available through Steam due to “a known issue at the end of the game”.

The release of Dark Matter might have taken longer to register on my radar if pockets of the internet hadn’t become enraged about the game’s abrupt ending over the weekend. After the failure of its $50,000 Kickstarter, the grotesque alien-infested Metroid-veinier found solace in the arms of publisher Iceberg Interactive. Unfortunately, as Indie Statik have covered in extensive detail, continued development of the game didn’t follow the original plan and the released version is, effectively, the first episode of a game that may never have a second episode. As it stands, the game ends with a whimper and a sudden block of text that is inconclusive to say the least. A shame, because what I played of the game was promising.

Adam had a play of Dark Matter back in July, and found himself rather taken with it. At the time it was Kickstartering itself, asking for £50,000. It fell dramatically short of that goal, but since then a publishing deal with Iceberg Interactive seems to have got things finished for Dutch devs, InterWave Studios. The Metroid-meets-horror side-scroller is due out on Steam in the next couple of weeks.

Dark Matter, a sci-fi horror game from the makers of Nuclear Dawn, is currently Kickstarting and I’ve played the opening parts of an early version. InterWave are keen to show that their game is more than grimdark Metroid and a few hours in its claustrophobic corridors demonstrate that it does have a mind and maw of its own.

For all its potential for mechanical variation, the Metroidvania is an oddly static form. I mean, we get these sprawling, multi-mansion maps, yet it’s always the same formula: start off essentially naked (or in Hell Yeah‘s case, literally naked), find item X, get past door Y, etc. There’s some exploration, sure, but the good stuff’s always gated by unflinching steel progress walls. InterWave, meanwhile, doesn’t even want people to refer to Dark Matter as a Metroidvania – possibly for that very reason. So instead, the Nuclear Dawn creator’s billing its second project as a “side-scrolling exploration and combat game” with a focus on survival-horror, AI, adventure game elements, and crafting – among other genre-benders.

The delayed Nuclear Dawn free weekend will be upon us from tomorrow! Igor from InterWave sent us this message about the FPS-RTS hybrid’s exciting promotional event: “In preparation for the Free Weekend on Steam, running Thursday 15th through Monday 19th, InterWave has released their biggest update for Nuclear Dawn since its release in September. The patch brings the début of all-new features and a host of improvements, including new weapons and interactive single-player training.” He also says the game will be 40% off at $12.

Have a read of Dan’s take on the game from just after launch if you want to know a bit more about what you’d be getting yourself into.

Update: Boo. The trial has been delayed. Now the 15th to 19th of December.

Nuclear Dawn’s multiplayer combination of strategy and FPS harks back to Savage and Natural Selection, with one player on each team taking the role of a base-building commander while the rest run around collecting resources and shooting one another. As might be expected, it’s the sort of game that needs plenty of players willing to form functional teams. Perhaps to that end, a free trial, accessible through Steam, begins December 15th and runs through ’til the 19th. In the hope that people might stick around, Interwave are also dropping the price of the game to $20. Do we have a Nuclear Dawn community here? I’m tempted to jump into the trial and see how the radioactive twilight suits my complexion.

Frankly, to classify Nuclear Dawn without going “it’s a bit like X” would take a paragraph. Instead, I’m going to propose a simple classification system, to do away with the frankly amazing bollocks that are the arbitrary genres we impose now, in favour of a more rational, long-winded bollocks. On the basis of my revolutionary & hubristic system, Nuclear Dawn is as follows:

Source-powered FPS-RTS hybrid Nuclear Dawn – which was once a mod and is now a full-blown commercial release – hits its closed beta next week, with a release scheduled for just month after that. Intrigued by the sci-fi imagery and talk of clever commander-led FPS team combat dynamics, we decided to speak to Interwave Studios’s Igor Raffaele about the project. He told us about their plans for free DLC, and explained what challenges lay ahead for the game after two years of commercial development. Also check out the trailer, below.Read the rest of this entry »

Nuclear Dawn, the FPS-RTS hybrid Source mod turned (maybe) commercial title, had all got a bit hazy of late. What was going on with it? We hadn’t even posted about it in two years. Two years! Anyway, we’ve just received word that post-apocalyptic project is getting a release in September (definitely!) The game is a multiplayer mix of FPS and RTS, with folks able to take on the roles of RTS-style commander, or one of four classes on the battlefield. As I understand it the two factions differ in how their bases work, with their team loadouts being roughly symmetrical. The new announcement also claims that the game will be packed with all the trappings of modern multiplayer, with unlocks, 60 ranks, squad-functionality, and Steamworks-based cloud configs and character stuff. It will kick off with six maps and 32-player servers. Not 32 player servers. Obviously.

So claims Nuclear Dawn (a name that immediately makes me think of Nuclear Winter’s theme from Freedom Force- skip to about 1m10 in), a bold, Source-engine powered RTS/FPS hybrid. It’s a document of a post-nanotechnology war in Earth’s near-future, and claims to be “the first game to offer a full FPS and RTS experience without crippling or diluting either side of the game.” If you succeed in annihilating the boundary in the post, you’ll find the first trailer for it below.Read the rest of this entry »